I recently spoke to a board chair who reflected on the paradoxes of leading through the past few years, noting that he now understands that two seemingly different ideas can be true at the same time. This is the nature of leading today—the work is not simply about solving problems, but rather it’s about making sense of circumstances and managing the polarities inherent in the education enterprise. Polarity thinking allows us to balance the tension of two interdependent ideas and move from either/or to both/and thinking. This is a crucial lens today as uncertainty can drive us into fight or flight mode, which usually leads to binary thinking. And, in times of crisis, that binary thinking can become quite extreme. Psychologists often refer to this as “splitting.”

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